DESPITE THE tight fiscal constraints under which the People's National Party (PNP) is staging its 71st annual conference this weekend, dirty money is playing no part in financing the activities, claims party treasurer Mark Golding.

"I have adopted a clean-money policy. I don't want any donation from Ponzi schemes or drug kingpins. The people who I have approached are people who I believe are reputable," Golding tells The Sunday Gleaner.

The PNP treasurer says the posture he has adopted must not be read as a deviation from what has happened in the past.

According to Golding, he has never received information on previous donors to the PNP. He insists that the decision to carefully choose donors was a personal one.

"I have approached people who I know or think might be sympathetic to what we are trying to achieve," Golding says.

corruption

In November 2006, pollster Bill Johnson found that the then governing PNP was losing ground because of the perception of corruption in its ranks. In March of that year, Johnson found that 52 per cent of the electorate had indicated that they would give the nod to the PNP to be returned as governing party, while a moderate 26 per cent lined up behind the then opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

However, by November, the PNP's fortunes dipped by 20 per cent while JLP support jumped to 32 per cent. The change came on the heels of a major ground campaign across the island by the then opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), as well as the Trafigura controversy into which the PNP was plunged.

Trafigura Beheer, which was contracted by the Jamaican Government to trade Nigerian crude oil, had made a donation of $31 million to the PNP. The incident became known as the 'Trafigura Scandal'.

The PNP eventually lost the 2007 general election to the JLP. PNP members claimed that they were outspent by as much as 10:1, and the party remained cognisant that its funding sources were critical to the survival of the organisation.

Trafigura affair

In April 2007, then PNP treasurer, Roger Clarke, told this newspaper that the party was hurting from the Trafigura affair.

"With all the scare about Trafigura, nobody wants to come forth with any kind of contribution lest their names be called," Clarke said then.

He said, however, that the challenge of funding was not insurmountable and promised that it was "not something that we have not been able to work our way out of."

On Wednesday, the new PNP treasurer said that the party was in a position to stage its annual conference.

"It is a budget that is in keeping with the difficulties of the time, but it has enabled us to put together a conference that achieves the objectives that we have," Golding says.

He tells The Sunday Gleaner that the party has "always tried to avoid being beholden to unsavoury elements" and that was something he intended to preserve.

daraine.luton@gleanerjm.com